Microsoft SDE Interview Experience - Core CS
Hi coders!
Sharing my Microsoft SDE Intern (Core CS) interview experience to help others preparing for similar rounds.
I will not share any actual interview questions as per policy, just the structure and concepts asked.
🧩 Round 1: Core CS + DSA (45 mins)
1. Brief Introductions
The interviewer started with a quick intro and asked about like:
- My current year and subjects in college
- What areas of CS I enjoy the most
2. OOPS Concepts
They moved into core Object-Oriented Programming fundamentals:
- Like famous GFG question 4 pillars of OOP and diffrence among them.
- Differences between languages like Java, C++, C (syntax, memory model, runtime behavior, features, etc.)
- A small case-study–style scenario where I had to discuss how I’d structure things using OOP and which data structures like Linked list , B+ trees made sense.
3. DBMS Case Scenario
I was given a simple real-world scenario and asked:
- Like How I would model the data
- What kind of data structure or storage approach would be efficient
No SQL queries asked—more on the conceptual/system design reasoning side.
4. Operating Systems Concepts
Some quick theoretical questions around:
- Framing
- Page faults
- General virtual memory behavior
5. DSA Coding Question (30 mins)
A single coding problem based on Grids.
I explained my approach, dry run, discussed complexity, and coded the solution.
➡️ Round wrapped up after the coding portion.
Hope this helps anyone preparing!